1. Field of the Disclosure
The disclosure relates generally to data communications, and in particular, to providing support for legacy systems for New World IP PBXs.
2. The Prior Art
Many enterprises are increasingly depending on branch-offices to extend their reach to customers and offer a more personalized level of service. One solution is to adopt many of the modern “New World” IP PBXs which incorporate voice, data, and fax using Internet Protocol (IP) technologies. However, with current legacy PBX equipment and separate voice and data networks, enterprises face fundamental application and communication integration challenges in deployment, operations, support, and maintenance of these branch-office systems. Older, or legacy systems, such as the traditional telephone system, typically are not compatible with the newer IP-based technologies. Thus, many of these branch-offices may appear as “islands” of information and employees, with reduced communications access to other employees and resources within the remote main enterprise office.
Thus, to integrate traditional voice mail systems into newer IP-based PBXs provide connectivity to traditional phone systems, serial lines (RS232) are typically used for signaling between the Call Processing component of the IP PBX and the voice mail system.
However, since serial line interfaces require peer-to-peer connectivity, a failure in any one component requires physical intervention to return the system to service, such as moving a cable to another backup or secondary system. For High Availability and mission-critical systems such as IP PBXs, this requirement is not acceptable.
The prior art has proposed workarounds which are typically expensive, non-scalable, or awkward to implement.
Hence, there is a need for a unified solution which provides support for both newer IP-based technologies and legacy systems, and provides fail-over support.